AMESS - Engineering Society (2021/R1)

The aim of the AMESS Disorientation event is to welcome new engineering students to the campus and give them an opportunity to socialize before lectures start so people are a bit more comfortable. The engineering cohort is usually quite a small bunch so it's quite important to know each other well before starting the various group projects on offer.

The original plan was on the 17th of Feb to do a tour and scavenger hunt around the Albany village campus to get students familiar with the building. This would have been followed by a bus trip to Long Bay regional park where the students would have been split into groups for a catapult building contest. Due to COVID Alert level, however, the event had to be postponed and the plan changed.

The event actually happened on the 19th of Feb, and the whole event took place on campus since we couldn't reschedule buses. We still did the tour and scavenger hunt as planned, which was followed by a bit of downtime where we set up several games throughout the foyer such as cards, pool, and a team-based version of tic-tac-toe. We also had a Nintendo Wii running which we later used to run a Mario Kart tournament. Afterwards, we picked up some pizza and hot chips for lunch.

The turnout for the event was very good despite our concerns about COVID. In total there were 24 first years which is the vast majority of the class, and several 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years attended too.